Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 05:51:28 11/27/98
Go up one level in this thread
On November 26, 1998 at 14:07:32, Richard A. Fowell (fowell@netcom.com) wrote: >On November 25, 1998 at 12:32:07, Geo Disher wrote: > >>On November 24, 1998 at 09:40:07, Georg Langrath wrote: >> >>>I feel a little bit sorry for chessprogrammers. They shall always find new >>>features in order to convince us that we need to buy their new product. But >>>what more do we want in features? Any ideas? >>> >>>Georg >> >>I would like to see a program that allows us to analyze a possition for period >>of time then stop the analysis then allow us to return to that same exact point >>in the analysis at a later time. > >Yes!!! There are many uses for this feature, > and I think there should be both a > "save program state" and a > "autosave program state" command. > >Robort Hyatt's recent power outage disaster could have been averted if >Crafty had an "autosave program state" feature. > The problem here is multi-platform/OS support. In unix it is quite easy to determine the memory "limits" of a program and write the whole thing out to disk as a "checkpoint" and then restart later. But it isn't so easy under windows, and each compiler is different making this more difficult. Some operating systems (LTSS on the cray's for example) allow you to do a "checkpoint" at any point you want, and if something crashes you can restore the "checkpoint" with no programming changes of any kind, the checkpoint is written to disk and looks like an executable program, except it restarts right where it was. This is harder with open files, malloc()'ed state and so forth, especially when you consider portability... the portability issue is why I haven't done this. It worked perfectly in Cray Blitz. >Robert was running a Deep Blue - Kasparov position on Crafty for a week or >so, and then a power outage lost everything, so he gave up on it. If >Crafty had the feature of saving a "restartable state" of search tree, >hash tables, tree, etc., then he could have resumed from the last such point. > >Better yet,if this feature were combined with an "autosave" of the state at a >user-specified frequency (once per day? once per hour?) there wouldn't be any >hassle in doing this. > >For really long searches (Nolot problems, etc), this sort of "autosave" >feature would be excellent - here are some of its many uses. > >- (1) protects against power outages >- (2) protects against program/system crashes >- (3) allows you to suspend analysis to use chess program > for other things, then resume. >- (3) allows you to suspend analysis to use your computer > for other things, then resume. >- (4) User support/beta test tool - lets you email "autosave" file to the > author in case of strange behaviour >- (5) Lets you "pass on" your problem from your old computer to your new > computer when you upgrade your computer. >- (6) Would let you "pass on" your problem to another person, > if you lose interest. >- (7) Would let you run a problem "24 hours a day" but exchanging it with > a colleague on the other side of the Earth (you run it during your > "night time", then ftp it to them, and they run it during your > "night time". (okay, I'm stretching a bit). > >Richard A. Fowell
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